ZANZIBAR CITY, Tanzania — Asserting that Tanzania’s Zanzibar Island is not a place for Christians, suspected Muslim extremists threw acid on a 60-year-old Catholic priest Sept. 13, sources said.
Joseph Anselmo Mwangamba stepped outside an Internet café on the outskirts of Zanzibar City, capital of the semi-autonomous island in the Indian Ocean about 16 miles off the coast of Tanzania, when the assailants threw acid on his face and chest, a café worker said.
“Finish him. Zanzibar is only for Muslims — not for Christians,” one of the assailants reportedly said, according to café worker Mariamu Juma.
As the criminals fled, Juma poured water on his burns and rushed him to Mnazi Moja Hospital. In critical condition, the priest was transferred to the mainland’s Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar-es Salaam. At press time, his condition was said to be stable, according to pastor Lucian Mgaywa of the Church of God, Zanzibar.
In August, two men on a motorbike threw acid on two British 18-year-old women in Zanzibar.
Suspected Islamic extremists shot and killed Evaristus Mushi, a 56-year-old Roman Catholic priest, Feb. 17 in the Mtoni area outside Zanzibar City. The murder came nearly two months after the Christmas Day 2012 shooting of another Catholic priest, Ambrose Mkenda, that seriously injured him.
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